Do You Believe in Love at First Sight? The Great British Love Survey Results!

Britain is a nation of roman­tics with a new sur­vey reveal­ing that the vast major­ity of us still believe in love at first sight.

• 72% believe in love at first sight
• 8% have fallen in love at first sight
• 96% have expe­ri­enced lust at first sight
• 41% could name a famous cou­ple who fell in love at first sight — David and Vic­to­ria Beck­ham came top with 8%
• Lon­don is the least roman­tic city in the country
• The North West is the most roman­tic region

The poll by TheLoveBuggy.com revealed that almost three quar­ters of Britons (72%) still believe it is pos­si­ble to fall in love with some­one just by set­ting eyes on them.

Only a hard hearted 28% of us believe love at first sight is impos­si­ble with more than half of those say­ing it takes months rather than weeks to fall in love and a cyn­i­cal four per cent stat­ing it takes years.

Respon­dents were also asked if they could name a celebrity cou­ple who had fallen in love at first sight with David and Vic­to­ria Beck­ham the most pop­u­lar answer with almost one in ten (eight per cent) appar­ently aware of how they met.

Alto­gether 41% were able to men­tion a famous cou­ple who had fallen for each other on sight with Prince William and Kate Mid­dle­ton named by four per cent of those polled.

Yet the study found that while most of us believe that love at first sight is pos­si­ble it seems elu­sive – with more than nine out of ten ques­tioned say­ing they had never expe­ri­enced it.

But an over­whelm­ing num­ber of those polled — 96% — said they had expe­ri­enced lust at first sight. The fig­ure was even higher for men – with every man ques­tioned agree­ing he’d felt lust at first sight com­pared to 92% of women.

TheLoveBuggy.com is a new web­site which lets peo­ple send dat­ing mes­sages to dri­vers by inputting their car num­ber plate. The site ques­tioned 500 men and 500 women, aged between 18 and 55 years of age, from across the UK.

Lon­don seems to be the least roman­tic city in the coun­try, despite its sta­tus as a tourist des­ti­na­tion for cou­ples from across the world, just 59% of Lon­don­ers acknowl­edged the pos­si­bil­ity of love at first sight.

Eliz­a­beth and Paul at Ingate­stone Hall. Photo credit Gary Roe­buck www.garyroebuck.co.uk Click to see their wed­ding on Eng­lish Wed­ding Blog!

The north west was revealed to be our most roman­tic region with almost eight out of ten (79%) believed it was pos­si­ble to fall for a stranger just by look­ing at them.

The Welsh were also shown to wear their hearts on their sleeves with more than three quar­ters (77%) declar­ing their belief in the power of love at first sight.

But Scotland’s brave hearts were revealed to be a more prag­matic bunch with just under two thirds, 65%, stat­ing it was pos­si­ble to fall in love with some­one by set­ting eyes on them for the first time.

A spokesman for TheLoveBuggy.com, who com­mis­sioned the research, said the sur­vey results con­firmed that romance was far from dead.

He said: “The con­cept of love at first sight has been around ever since Adam first copped eyes on Eve’s shiny apple.

“But with every­one these days lead­ing such hec­tic and busy lives we thought it would be inter­est­ing to find out if any­one out there still believed in it.

“It’s fair to say we’ve been sur­prised by the over­whelm­ingly pos­i­tive response to our sur­vey. It seems most of us still believe that it’s pos­si­ble to fall for a stranger just by sight, even if the vast major­ity of us have never had the experience.

“The regional dif­fer­ences are inter­est­ing as well. Lon­don­ers are so busy avoid­ing eye con­tact on the tube so per­haps it’s only to be expected that less of them would enter­tain the idea although a clear major­ity still did.

“But the fur­ther north you go the more roman­tic peo­ple seem to become. At least until you get as far as Manchester.

“After that it dips a lit­tle with Geordies prov­ing a lit­tle more cyn­i­cal and then the Scots tak­ing a much cooler view of things.

“But the over­all pic­ture was hugely heart­warm­ing for those of us who believe that love at first sight can hap­pen all the time.”

So do you believe in love at first sight? I’m unde­cided… I like to think it exists, and I know there’s noth­ing bet­ter than falling head over heels for some­one! I’d love to hear if you fell in love at first sight.

Claire xxx